Talk:FTL
Normandy in FTL flight picture There are no screen shots in this article so I have made one, in 720p resolution. Have no fear or copyrights, I assure you these are made by me from the in-game cut scenes played with a Bink video player and captured with "Print Screen". Anyone could have done the same :) I have posted across a few articles, so be sure to check them out as well (Sovereign, Destiny Ascension, FTL, M35 Mako, Mass Relay and Citadel). I believe this screen shot is the Normandy in FTL flight. As I have no idea how to upload images here I will let you do it. http://c.imagehost.org/0474/NormandyFTLFlight.png 17:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)Darkdrium Dozen lightyears a day? Can anyone tell me the Codex source for the statement, "With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen lightyears can be traveled in a day's cruise."? Tophvision 12:13, 16 June 2009 (UTC) :There isn't a Codex source; it comes from a quote from Ashley Williams. She says when she went home to help her sister, it wasn't far, "only a dozen light years, no more than a day's cruise. It wasn't like going to Earth or anything." --Tullis 12:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC) Ah. Thank you. Tophvision 13:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC) Impossibility Is it even worth mentioning that the way Mass Effect explains FTL doesn't actually make even a little bit of sense? The FTL system decribed in ME uses element zero to reduce the effective mass of an object. While this would ''allow something to accelerate faster given less force (Acceleration = Force divided by Mass), this would ''not allow something to "break the light barrier." The Wikipedia article on FTL describes why right in the introduction: "Under the special theory of relativity, a particle (that has mass) with subluminal velocity needs infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light." So unless eezo is reducing objects to negative mass, it's not really doing anything to counter the real problem: having any mass to begin with. RobertM525 01:58, February 23, 2010 (UTC) :No, not worth mentioning. It's scifi. Suspension of disbelief applies. It's possible in the Mass Effect universe, and it certainly makes more than a little bit of sense there, so as far as this article is concerned, it makes sense. If you object to this, the forums are the perfect place to say so, but if we started including every little inconsistency, or everything that (as far as we know, as our science is far from perfect and is undoubtedly less advanced than theirs) seems impossible to us, despite the fact that it is demonstrably possible in-game, in other words, if we were to disregard suspension of disbelief, these articles would be full of nothing but nitpicks. SpartHawg948 02:08, February 23, 2010 (UTC) ::I think the idea is (I'm not entirely sure where I'm getting this from, though- maybe a making-of video) the mass effect field effectively raises the speed of light within it, so the ship isn't really going faster than the speed of light, but functionally it is. I could be entirely wrong, though. Tophvision 03:16, February 23, 2010 (UTC) :::Yes, that's what the codex says FTL drives do: "Faster-than-light drives use element zero cores to reduce the mass of a ship, allowing higher rates of acceleration. This effectively raises the speed of light within the mass effect field, allowing high speed travel with negligible relativistic time dilation effects." Not that it makes any more sense to me but my knowledge of relativity is limited to spelling it. Makes about as much sense as warp drives and jumpgates. Mass effect fields are just handwavium to explain all the science fiction tropes (FTL, psi powers, force fields, etc.) because realism tends to kill space opera. You might as well point out that if Normandy's antimatter thrusters produce heat in the millions of degrees Celsius, then that means the thrusters are made out of material capable of handling such extreme heat, which means, well, the Normandy should be invulnerable to any kind of weapon that could exist. Or that every single FTL-capable ship is more powerful than an Everest-class dreadnought's main gun. If a 20kg slug at 1.3% of light speed is powerful, think about what hundreds or thousands of tons moving at faster than light speeds can do. —Seburo 10:04, February 23, 2010 (UTC) Oh, I'm all for suspension of disbelief. But sometimes it helps when your technobable has more "technicalness" in its babble so it's not so clearly in violation of simple physics principles. :) RobertM525 09:10, February 23, 2010 (UTC) :Again though, these are "simple physics principles" that may well no longer be considered correct in the 2180s. As the wikipedia article you cited states, that "impossibility" is based on the special theory of relativity. It's a theory because, quite simply, there really isn't (as yet) a way to prove or disprove it. For all we know, the cornerstone of FTL in Mass Effect is some new scientific theory (or a simple test of the special theory of relativity) that renders the special theory null and void. The point is, there is FTL in Mass Effect that works on the principles enumerated in the game. Therefor, it is not impossible, and clearly (in-game, at least) it makes perfect sense. SpartHawg948 09:27, February 23, 2010 (UTC) ::As for a ship at FTL being way more powerful that a dreadnought's main cannon, the mass effect field works specifically by lowering the mass of the object in the field. The Kinetic Energy equation in part relies on mass: Mass*Velocity²*.5=Kinetic Energy (There's some more complicated formula for relativistic speeds, though). Thus, as mass is reduced, kinetic energy is reduced, even if the ship is going faster. Tophvision 12:28, February 23, 2010 (UTC) :::But velocity is squared in the formula for kinetic energy. The increase in velocity probably overtakes any decrease in mass, in adding to kinetic energy. In any case, both ships and mass accelerators work using mass effect fields. The slug is lightened, which is why it can be accelerated to such speeds. This is applying Newtownian physics to a relativistic environment, but I see no reason why tossing stuff at FTL speeds would be less powerful than sub-light speeds. —Seburo 22:06, February 23, 2010 (UTC) ::::The mass effect field must decrease mass at a higher rate than the square of the ship's velocity increases, then. As for mass accelerators, the slug exits the mass effect field before hitting the target, so its mass is still the same. Tophvision 23:57, February 23, 2010 (UTC) :::::Conservation of energy. If a slug goes back to its normal mass upon exiting a mass effect field, then it must slow down. Otherwise, um... it's getting a lot of free energy from nowhere, violating the First Law of Thermodynamics. —Seburo 00:06, February 24, 2010 (UTC) Might as well say that it IS impossible to reconstruct memory from DNA alone, as DNA strands do not contain codes for memory. Furthermore, the neural composition of our brain is always rewired over and over as new inputs come flooding in by the seconds. Thus, it's really is impossible (by the bounds of current scientific knowledge, at least) that Shep retains all memories intact. If Shep's skills are intact, that's not so unbelievable for there might be programming into that. But memories can't be reconstructed. I would say "ever". But there you are. Suspension of disbelieve. Time travel. FTL travel. Ships that have children. We find them all in sci-fi. Enjoy. --Braveangel 16:48, May 7, 2010 (UTC) Although this conversation may have been finished for a while I would still like to add to it. Firstly let me define some symbols for the rest of my edit. C0 is the speed of light in undistorted space. C1 is the speed of light in a low mass field. C2 is light speed in a high mass field. Now lets find the codex that mentions comm bouys (communications I think). It says that in a low mass field, light travels at FTL. I.e. C1>C0. While this does not immediately make sense, it allows the basic FTL issues to fall into place. Consider that perhaps (as implied) mass effect fields change two things about the space it acts over. 1, the mass of all objects in the fields changes, 2 the C changes. So when using the equations of special relativity inside a low mass field, C1 is used in place of C0 just as M1 is used in place of M0. This makes C1 ultimate speed limit when inside a low mass field and an object could go faster than C0 so long as it remained slower than C1. (It follows that conversely C2'to speeds' faster than the speed of light...". Confirmation?GambitNC 14:06, May 7, 2010 (UTC) heat The link to heat redericts to the combat (Re: gameplay mechanics) heat description, and not one actually useful to Heat produced from starships or FTL travel. Can we create a relevant Heat(starship) page?--Paladin cross 17:58, January 21, 2011 (UTC) :"Heat" redirects to the most important usage of it in the game: how it affects weapons and gameplay. Starship heat is relatively unimportant because it in no way affects any part of the gameplay (you never control a starship and have to worry about it) or the story. And if "Heat" itself is a redirect and not an article despite how important it is to gameplay, why would we then create an article for heat as it applies to starships? The best solution here would be to simply correct the link "heat" in this article to link the relevant Codex entry, which I'll do now. -- Commdor (Talk) 18:19, January 21, 2011 (UTC) Thank you for your input and solution.--Paladin cross 18:21, January 21, 2011 (UTC) Marab Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mfV9PzAapU from about 1:05 "Why is the ship turning around we are only halfway there" The ship is turning around to slow down since space has little/no drag. Midnightpiranha (talk) 19:37, January 7, 2013 (UTC) FTL speeds cleanup Last section about FTL speeds is a mess (again? I thought I cleaned that up at one point). Who the heck actually measures the speed and distance to another galaxy in meters? I'm pretty sure the part about human FTL only being 50 times the speed of light (as compared to the standard Citadel races 4,000-5,000 times the speed of light) was only before they joined the Citadel. Arthurh3535 (talk) 01:01, October 15, 2017 (UTC)